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Effects of energy performance certificates on investment: A quasi-natural experiment approach

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  • Broberg, Thomas
  • Egüez, Alejandro
  • Kažukauskas, Andrius

Abstract

Incomplete information may be one reason why some households do not invest in energy efficiency even though it would benefit them to do so. Energy performance certificates (EPCs) have been promoted to overcome such information shortages. In this paper, we investigate whether EPCs together with mandatory home energy audits make households more likely to invest in energy efficiency. Our study takes advantage of the mandatory nature of the EPCs to avoid the potential selection bias problem that typically applies to studies using voluntary energy audits as the treatment. Our treatment group consists of single-household houses in Sweden sold from 2008, i.e., when EPCs became legally required in connection with sales of residential buildings, to 2015; while the control group consists of houses sold between 2002 and 2008, i.e., without an EPC. The results show that there is no statistically significant treatment effect for most of the measures that a household can take to improve the energy performance of their house. The significant treatment effect that we do find concerns a few heating system-related measures.

Suggested Citation

  • Broberg, Thomas & Egüez, Alejandro & Kažukauskas, Andrius, 2019. "Effects of energy performance certificates on investment: A quasi-natural experiment approach," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:84:y:2019:i:c:s0140988319302610
    DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2019.104480
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    2. Weigert, Andreas & Hopf, Konstantin & Günther, Sebastian A. & Staake, Thorsten, 2022. "Heat pump inspections result in large energy savings when a pre-selection of households is performed: A promising use case of smart meter data," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    3. Singhal, Puja & Pahle, Michael & Kalkuhl, Matthias & Levesque, Antoine & Sommer, Stephan & Berneiser, Jessica, 2022. "Beyond good faith: Why evidence-based policy is necessary to decarbonize buildings cost-effectively in Germany," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    4. Broberg, Thomas & Kažukauskas, Andrius, 2021. "Information policies and biased cost perceptions - The case of Swedish residential energy consumption," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    5. Aleksandar S. Anđelković & Miroslav Kljajić & Dušan Macura & Vladimir Munćan & Igor Mujan & Mladen Tomić & Željko Vlaović & Borivoj Stepanov, 2021. "Building Energy Performance Certificate—A Relevant Indicator of Actual Energy Consumption and Savings?," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(12), pages 1-19, June.
    6. Xu, Le & Yang, Lili & Li, Ding & Shao, Shuai, 2023. "Asymmetric effects of heterogeneous environmental standards on green technology innovation: Evidence from China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Energy performance certificate (EPC); Home energy audits; Quasi-natural experiment; Incomplete information; Investment decision; Energy efficiency gap; Policy evaluation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q41 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Demand and Supply; Prices
    • Q48 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Government Policy
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

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